this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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I have seen some critical views on Nostr as a part of decentralized network discussions, but most seem to be focused on culture not function.

What are the functional / protocol differences that make you prefer ActivityPub over Nostr?

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[–] silverpill@mitra.social 13 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I don't know much about recent developments, but the early version of the protocol had several major flaws:

- Identity is based on a non-rotatable key, other types of identity are not supported.
- No privacy without encryption.
- Media attachments are not supported, all images are stored on a single server.
- Servers only store data and don't do anything else, so they get abstracted away and everyone uses the same 5 relays (in Fediverse each server has a personality, and that creates a strong incentive to self-host).

There are also many minor things that I dislike, for example the use of numbers instead of human-readable names, unusual cryptography and so on.

[–] N3M@reddthat.com 2 points 1 day ago

As of more recently:

  • The identity system is still the same, keys aren't rotatable and still the core of your account. Outside of edge cases like Frost Bunkers (outsourcing key management to a cluster of third party servers), or platforms like DiVine letting you register with an email, keys remain pretty much the same.
  • Private infomration like DMs have been altered. They're still E2E encrypted, but now only the people involved in the conversation can request a copy of the encrypted DM (I assume that's what you're referring to, but I may be mistaken).
  • Media attachements are usually uploaded to Blossom servers now. Standard notes still only embed remote media, but the ecosystem has a semi decentralized means of hosting content, and most clients will have a more standard 'upload and share' type of feature that most other platforms/protocols have.
  • The more recent outbox model (on supported clients) allows you to set the relays that will host your content and replies/reactions to your content, diversifying the ecosystem away from a handful of big relays. Software like Ditto also provides a more Mastodon community style experience - even to the extent of supporting the Mastodon API.
[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

of numbers instead of human-readable names

TBF, they have introduced a 'verified' system that lets you use human readable names.

[–] silverpill@mitra.social 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 3 points 1 day ago

Wow, that's bad. I would hate working with this so much.